1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a music ensemble system, a controller used therefor, and a program that enable users to operate a plurality of performance terminals and readily play music together by setting respective performance terminals to support playing of different playing parts. More particularly, the present invention relates to an improvement in changing the assignment of playing parts to the performance terminals.
2. Description of the Related Art
Concerted music playing systems are known that enable users to operate a plurality of performance terminals and readily play music together by setting respective performance terminals to support playing of different playing parts. Some of these music ensemble systems change the assignment of playing parts to the performance terminals. Playing parts as used herein refer to parts such as melodies and rhythm sounds that constitute a piece of music ensemble. Playing parts may include, by way of example, melody parts, rhythm parts, accompaniment parts of different tones (e.g., tones of different instruments), and so on.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-276136 describes a music playing system including a plurality of slave devices and one master device. The master device is provided with as many connectors as the slave devices, and the respective connecters correspond to different playing parts. Once the respective slave devices are connected to the connectors, sound data about a piece of music for a playing part corresponding to each of the connectors is input to the slave device from the master device. A player of the slave device vibrates the slave device to cause it to produce musical sounds based on the input sound data. Thus, the respective users can play different particular part to play music together by vibrating the user's slave devices in a timed manner.
When the same music ensemble is played together for a number of times, each of the players may desire to play a playing part different from one played the last time. In such a case, it may not be important which playing part is assigned to which performance terminal, but changing the assigned playing parts in any manner may suffice. The music playing system of the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-276136 does not provide high operability in this situation. It requires reconnecting each of the performance terminals (slave devices) to connectors corresponding to a desired tone every time the parts are changed, because each of the connectors corresponds to a certain part.
In addition, the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-276136 only discloses a case where the playing parts are assigned to the slave devices (performance terminals) in a one-to-one relationship, but not a case where music is played with a larger number of playing parts than the number of performance terminals. If music is played with a larger number of playing parts than the number of performance terminals, the differences in the number of sounds (the number of sound data items such as Note On data items) of the playing parts may cause a significant imbalance in the total number of sounds of the playing parts assigned to the respective performance terminals, depending on the manner of assigning the playing parts.
For example, suppose that there are playing parts with 2000 sounds, 1000 sounds, 100 sounds, and 20 sounds, respectively. The playing part with 2000 sounds and the playing part with 1000 sounds are assigned to one performance terminal, and the playing part with 100 sounds and the playing part with 20 sounds are assigned to another terminal. Then, the number of sounds of the playing parts assigned to the two terminals is 3000 and 120 respectively, resulting in a significant imbalance.